I watched the final voyage of the Starship Enterprise last night. As a long-time Trekkie, I hate to say it, but it’s about time.
Last night’s Enterprise episode marks the finale of the Star Trek universe. The franchise had become bogged down in its own canon, and ever since the demise of Roddenberry, had lost its vision. The last decent series was Next Generation; I barely paid attention to Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Enterprise itself held promise, but failed to live up to expectations. It’s Post-9/11 story arc with the Xindi only served to throw the series off-course even more, and it appeared to finally be getting back on track just in time to be cancelled.
The final episode was a pathetic, contrived mess that tried to blend Next Generation with the current show. The ideal finale episode should have left the crew at some critical juncture, but ready to continue their explorations of “strange, new worlds.” We should have been left at least with a sense of promise. As it was, the ship was being mothballed, and the crew was dispersing. To make matters even worse, they killed off Commander Tucker for absolutely no reason. His death made no sense to the plot, and was only used as a potential tear-jerker. The appearance of Commander Riker and Deanna Troi, and subsequent tie-in to an obscure story from Next Gen, were more stomach-churning than endearing. Laura’s words – it took the focus away from the people it should have shown – the first Enterprise crew. She was especially peaved when Riker/Troi ended the holodeck program and walked away, leaving everything in limbo. We never hear Archer’s speech, with serves as a prelude to foundation of The United Federation of Planets. It was quite obvious that the episode was thrown together when news came down that the show was cancelled. The ending left absolutely no possibility of a big screen return, which is a good thing. Oh well, I’ll catch the TOS and TNG reruns when I need another Trek fix, and let the rest of this fade into TV history.